This week, outdoor industry leaders from across Colorado gathered in Keystone for the Colorado Outdoor Industry Leadership Summit, or COILS, under the theme “Base Camp to Peak.” The summit’s opening breakout session, led by Colorado Parks and Wildlife, offered an inside look at the first year of implementing Colorado’s Outdoors Strategy — the nation’s first comprehensive framework uniting conservation, outdoor recreation, and climate resilience under one vision.
That distinction matters. While other states have outdoor recreation plans or conservation strategies, Colorado built something different: a single, collaborative framework that ties them together, backed by real money and real partners.
In year one alone, state grant programs invested over $111 million in projects aligned with the Strategy’s goals:
- Conserving more than 81,000 acres
- Creating or enhancing 185 recreation areas
- Funding 190 wildlife habitat and climate resilience projects
The Strategy rests on three “North Star” goals: climate-resilient conservation and restoration, exceptional and sustainable outdoor recreation, and coordinated planning and funding. It’s supported by a Resource Hub with free data dashboards and mapping tools, and by the Regional Partnerships Initiative — 21 locally driven coalitions covering 91% of the state.
And that’s where Pikes Peak Outdoors comes in. As the designated Colorado Outdoor Regional Partner for El Paso, Teller, and Fremont counties, PPO isn’t just participating in the Strategy — we’re one of its leading examples. Our OPPI vision plan, built over four years with input from more than 400 attendees at 15 community listening sessions and nearly 1,000 survey respondents, is the local blueprint that mirrors the statewide framework.
The proof is on the ground. The Peak Exceptionalism Project — the first phase of a $6.1 million effort — is already advancing Ring the Peak Trail segments, restoring 300 acres of bighorn sheep habitat at Dome Rock, expanding camping along the Gold Belt Scenic Byway, and launching a year-round ambassador program with Rocky Mountain Field Institute. The Governor’s Office itself called the investment “a jumping off point for millions of dollars of future public/private investments in our region’s outdoors through Colorado’s Outdoors Strategy.”
Colorado set the standard. The Pikes Peak region is showing what it looks like when a community actually delivers on it.
What you can do
Colorado’s Outdoors Strategy is a ten-year vision, and its success depends on sustained funding. That’s why Proposition 137 on the November 3 ballot matters so much for our region. We are voting yes.
Prop 137 could direct $175 million a year in existing sales tax revenue from sporting goods — without raising taxes — into a new Conserve and Protect Colorado’s Water, Land and Forests Fund. Roughly $83 million would go to Great Outdoors Colorado, nearly doubling its lottery-based revenue and directly fueling the Regional Partnerships Initiative that funds work like our Peak Exceptionalism Project. Another $83 million would go to wildfire mitigation and watershed restoration through the Department of Natural Resources and the Colorado State Forest Service — critical for the Front Range, where wildfire risk threatens both our landscapes and our recreation economy. The remaining $8.7 million would support outdoor recreation economic development and the Outdoor Equity Grant Program, more than doubling funding for both.
Colorado built the nation’s first comprehensive outdoors strategy. Prop 137 will help fund it.
